Tangled in a Knot
by Ensimismada
Summary: Diving into the mind of the young shinigami substitute as he yet again defies expectations. Introspective description of what it is like to feel and interact with reiatsu, based on a scene from episode 3 chapter 008. Subtle IchiRuki.


"We should just wait for orders, instead of trying to follow him," she said coldly, hoping to balance out his fervor with reason. She could feel him burning to act, and was afraid that she, too, would be consumed by the energy of his raw desire if she didn't quickly rein in their wild, desperate fears and focus on something constructive. Everything about Ichigo constantly set her reeling, threw her neat little world into chaos with the sheer strength and utter enveloping completeness of his aura. Again, she found herself staring, completely unable to comprehend him. He had taken all of her power, accepted his role as a shinigami, and grown at a tremendous rate in that role, without once every going into shock as she turned his world upside down. Instead, he sent _her_ reeling...

---

Ichigo looked up and down the street desperately. Despite Rukia's scolding, he was much more focused than she at the moment. His mind was a blur. Follow Chad? There was no way they could follow him; they didn't know where he was in the first place. But something, something... He paced, perfectly comfortable in his shinigami form, moving lightly and smoothly despite the massive power he wielded. He accepted it all by now as perfectly routine, even normal. But something was nagging at him uncomfortably. _There must be something I can do!_

---

So they stood on the street corner in the warm spring twilight. A few brief moments passed; the streetlamps flickered on one by one. Each was a person of action, and yet both were helpless to save their friend and classmate. Rukia clenched her fist tightly around her cell phone, knuckles white. Tired of moving between one block corner and the next, Ichigo had finally taken to hovering near her, tense with frustration. Waiting for that thing to beep was useless; it had been malfunctioning lately, anyhow.

---

Chad. Parakeet.

Hollow.

Chad was late for school that day, when he first brought the wire cage housing small creature. Parakeet. Chad. Lunch. Cage...

Rukia had assured him that no harm would come of the lingering spirit he felt in the parakeet. She was impressed that he had quickly sensed something so faint, and proud that he immediately worried for the safety of his classmates.

Parakeet.

Chad.

Parakeet.

That strange feeling he'd gotten when he first saw the animal; it felt a lot like a ghost, but with a slightly different texture. There was something that made it stand out.

Parakeet.

Ghost.

The ghost in the parakeet.

_ The ghost in the parakeet!_

"That's it!" he said suddenly, realizing a way to get to Chad, "we can follow the spirit force of the ghost in that bird to find Chad!" Excited to finally have a lead, Ichigo steeled himself, calming his nerves, closing his eyes, and focusing inward. "Yosh," he murmured softly.

"Don't be an idiot," Rukia barked sharply, rounding on him. Ichigo's eyes snapped open in surprise, brow creases deepening in annoyance. She couldn't possibly have any better ideas.

"How about you stop distracting me like an idiot," he retorted. Rukia's mouth hung open uncharacteristically as she realized that he was serious. Sure, he might have been able to discern the spirit in the bird when it was sitting in front of them, that was fine, but there was absolutely no way he could detect something so faint from this distance. Not only was the aura of the spirit in the parakeet faint, it was hopelessly mingled with the creature's own life force. She doubted she could have detected it, even with all of her powers fully restored. Before she could voice just how impossible the task with which he charged himself was, he cast her a meaningful glance, brown eyes full of boundless resolve. Caught off guard, she was powerless to respond to that look, and instead shut her mouth.

Ichigo again closed his eyes and drew himself inward. A light breeze ruffled his hair as he shut out all of his senses, blackening his inner world. He pushed aside his nagging fear for Chad, his sense of insecurity in his own power, his doubt. He stilled each emotion, and, as if hovering over the glassy surface of a motionless pool of water, he silently and calmly began to search his memory. Images flickered in his mind, but it was not an image he wanted. He was searching for a feeling, like a fleeting scent.

Chad. Chad at lunch. A cage. A parakeet. The parakeet in the cage had a spirit bound to it. _Think, think, think,_ Ichigo chanted to himself. He had to recall exactly how he felt when his spirit energy brushed against that of the parakeet. The feel of the energy, like the surface of a particular stone. It had a distinct signature. He pored over the memory, attempting to stir the exact same feelings in himself, to remember the slight tremor that had echoed across his own great stillness, introduced by the ghost in the parakeet.

---

Rukia watched Ichigo wide-eyed. This was foolishness. And yet, she could not bring herself to utter aloud her disbelief. He was unlike anyone – or anything – she had met before. After all, this was the person, the mere human, who could see shinigami, even touch shinigami. He had broken her binding kidou with the strength of his soul without taking any damage. He had raced toward a Hollow effectively unarmed. As a shinigami, he wielded an enormous zanpakutou effortlessly, and he emitted a spirit power that defied his origins. He had absorbed all of her powers when she had intended to carefully control the transfer so as not to lethally burn through him. If she wasn't capable of limiting him then, before he even had a scrap of shinigami power, what right did she have to tell him he couldn't do this now?

That aside, a small part of her hoped, even believed desperately, that he could do this. If he could do all the other impossible things she had seen him do in the past few weeks, then perhaps this too was within his reach.

---

Ichigo gently shifted his focus outward. He probed his senses, carefully feeling for every last scrap of spiritual residue that was within his reach. He could not afford to miss any trace of the ghost in the parakeet that would lead him to Chad. Each field around him had subtly distinct properties, like voices in a crowd. Ichigo carefully began to sift through each, conglomerating the signs and assigning each set of sensations to its particular spirit force. In his mind's eye, the patterns of the vague, shifting fog of spiritual energies began to take form. As structure began to form, he pushed outward, reaching out with his senses, sweeping the world, straining to find the pulse that matched his memory.

---

Rukia was surprised to see the lines in his face relax. He was completely determined, but at ease. As see watched, she felt his spirit power focusing, drawing inward. He restricted himself, cutting off the outside world, shutting out distraction. And yet his energies somehow intensified and clarified, almost as if he were drawing in the energy that began to swirl around him. His power had always been erratic, wildly unpredictable but frightfully strong. Even so, as she watched him, eyes narrowed intently, she began to see patterns forming, lines along the intersection of his strangely controlled power and the spiritual residues that surrounded them.

Rukia let out a small gasp as the lines began to consolidate further. "Impossible..." she murmured.

---

In the back of some part of his mind, Ichigo was pleased by how convenient it was that spirit energy could be packaged into these ribbon-like threads. It made things much neater to compress all the like energy together and examine the threads separately, instead of wading through a sea of commingling forces. The end of each broad white thread hovered in the air, waving untamed, as if in the wind. Unsatisfied that he had found everything, Ichigo reached out further, stretching his senses in spherical field around him, searching desperately. With each encounter of a new spirit, he would hammer into shape, bundling it together into another thread before expanding his periphery farther. Chad was out there, somewhere, and needed his help.

---

Even as she marveled that he could possibly visualize spirit threads, Rukia detected a slight shift in Ichigo's attention. His aura was slowly growing outward. Like a thin shell, he advanced forward a wave of energy, the surface of which pulsed gently. It was a slowly expanding bubble that emanated from and encircled a far more brightly burning fire. For Rukia, so familiar with spirit energy, the pulse was the key identifying characteristic of its intense source. Everything about this field was undeniably _Ichigo_. Having worked beside him, she was already intimately familiar with the feel of his spirit energy; it left her feeling strangely comfortable. His energy moved with a vibrant pulse, incredibly dense and strong. It was a ripple that somehow left her feeling more alive as it washed over her.

---

As Ichigo advanced outward, he stopped abruptly when he came across a feeble power that visualized itself as a red thread. Even before it solidified, without having to follow the thread, he knew immediately that it was Rukia. It felt exactly like her. He paused to examine the feel of her power more closely, vaguely wondering why it appeared a different color than all the rest. It was certainly weak, much, much weaker than he would have expected of a shinigami. Then again, she said her powers were still recovering, so perhaps that explained the tattered edges of the ribbon that frayed no matter how carefully he shaped his power to coax them together. Somehow, she felt delicate, like a lone flower that needed to be protected against the buffeting of the wind. Ichigo smiled to himself, knowing that Rukia would be highly displeased if she caught him comparing her spirit powers to a flower. She had a stubbornness and tenacity that she made sure none would deny. Her temper and cold glare certainly were not flower-like. And yet her spiritual power was so weak. He made a mental note not to allow her to push herself healing him next time. He had to help her recover.

Right now, however, there was a more pressing matter. Deciding to work with what he had found so far, Ichigo stabilized the leading edge of his senses and again turned inward, surveying a field of rolling white threads. Though they appeared identical to the eye, each felt different, and that was all he needed. He mentally compared several to his memory of the feel of the ghost in the parakeet before opening his eyes and reaching out confidently to seize the thread that appeared in his hand.

"This one" he murmured triumphantly, a rare grin gracing the hard features of his face. Before Rukia could comment that the look suited him far better than his usual scowl, he raced off into the night, following the spirit thread to its origin, to the friend he was confident he would save.


End file.
